Part 1: A Navel-Gazing, Suburban Post-Boomer Awakens to the Climate Crisis. The first time I walked to Walden, six miles north of my house in the thickly wooded suburbs west of Boston, it had nothing to do with the planet.
And it didn't have much to do with Henry David Thoreau. I'd never been a communicant in the cult of Thoreau, never made my devotions in that temple. I'd done the assigned reading in college—"Civil Disobedience,"obviously, and Walden (OK, parts of it)—and that was about all. Wasn't really my thing. And while I'd spent a lot of time in the Great Outdoors, imbibing sweet draughts of nature in what I thought was wilderness—in the mountains of California, where I grew up, and in Arizona and Utah, Idaho and Montana, New England and Nepal—by the age of 40, I'd somehow never read the line from Thoreau's essay "Walking," those words most quoted by environmentalists and nature writers everywhere: "in Wildness is the preservation of the world. " No, that first time, in the summer of '07, it wasn't about the planet.
I know it's a cliché. ‘I withdraw’: A talk with climate defeatist Paul Kingsnorth. A longer version of this interview appeared at ThoreauFarm.org.
Paul Kingsnorth. Not everyone is quite ready to hear, or accept, what Paul Kingsnorth has to say. An English writer and erstwhile green activist, he spent two decades (he’ll turn 40 this year) in the environmental movement, and he’s done with all that. And not only environmentalism — he’s done with “hope.” He’s moved beyond it. In 2009, he founded, together with collaborator Dougald Hine, something called the Dark Mountain Project. These are precarious and unprecedented times … Little that we have taken for granted is likely to come through this century intact.We don’t believe that anyone — not politicians, not economists, not environmentalists, not writers — is really facing up to the scale of this … Somehow, technology or political agreements or ethical shopping or mass protest are meant to save our civilization from self-destruction.Well, we don’t buy it. Ouch. If “sustainability” is about anything, it is about carbon.
‘I withdraw’: A talk with climate defeatist Paul Kingsnorth. What is the Role of Civil Disobedience Today? By Doug DuBrin, an English and history teacher, as well as an editor and writer Subject(s) Social Studies, Civics Estimated Time: Two to three class periods, plus extended activities Grade Level 9th-12th Objective Through this lesson, the student will come to understand the practice of civil disobedience in view of both the death of Rosa Parks and of the 50th anniversary of her landmark act.
Background for students: In light of the death of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks (1913-2005), much of the nation has been examining Parks’ monumental action and legacy. Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in the segregated South helped ignite a nationwide movement toward correcting deeply ingrained biases based on race in both the American government and in society. Background for teachers: Civil disobedience has its roots in antiquity, but its more recent application can be traced to American essayist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Procedure Part I: Part II Part III Part IV. What is the Role of Civil Disobedience Today? OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Winter, 1995), pp. 26-29. Iconoclastic Individualism - Henry David Thoreau (part 3) The Thoreau Reader. Civil Disobedience - HD Thoreau feat Ron Paul. Iconoclastic Individualism - Henry David Thoreau (part 2)
Iconoclastic Individualism - Henry David Thoreau (part 1)